Supergirl (2010) # 60

 By Mark Rodriguez

Some time before the New 52, March 2011 to be exact, DC comics did a thing where everyone got a cover featuring the main character up against a white background with their associated logo behind them. I picked up the Supergirl comic and it led to a cool story that featured a lot of other heroes. Let's check it out.

'Good Looking Corpse Part 1' opens in Harvard University with two students sharing lunch while checking out their phones (that sure hasn't changed nowadays). One of them ponders the fact that the Roman Empire caused a lot of atrocities back in its day but nowadays people think of the advances to civilization that dawned because of it. He says every time aliens try to invade the world, the superheroes chase them away without thinking of what new advances in technology they might have brought through their rule. The other student says he's talking about Supergirl, and she's an alien. The first student checks his phone and says 'it's up'.

In Metropolis, Lois Lane meets up with Catherine Devereux who works at Cadmus. Catherine explains she worked on advanced genetics and bio-engineering and was impressed by how advanced their technology was. Lois asks why she left Cadmus three weeks ago. Catherine says she wanted to watch over her nine-year old son who has leukemia. She also found out about 'The Project' but she didn't know who to go to and doesn't feel safe now that Superman was gone. Lois reminds her that Superman isn't the only one protecting Metropolis. 

Supergirl is flying through the city skies and sees a guy falling off a building. She swoops in to catch him and brings him back to the rooftop saying he should be more careful. His friend was filming this and was impressed his friend actually jumped. Supergirl asks if the kid jumped off on purpose. He says he also wanted her number as she rolls her eyes.

Back to the Harvard kids, a guy named David joins them, and introduces them to his girlfriend Elise. His friends tease him that the girl is just after David's trust fund. The blond kid explains he just created an app called Flyover where anyone can report any sightings of superheroes seen flying or fighting. The user can log in and gain points and awards depending on how popular that particular metahuman is. His friend ask if he already set the beta version, and the guy says he actually set it up live and it already got a response. It was the video filmed from the guy that that purposely jumped off the roof from earlier. However, these kids were not the only ones that saw the video.

Just then a portal opens in front of Supergirl. Metallo, Parasite, Kryptonite Man, and the Silver Banshee all step out in front of her. Supergirl is a little concerned since two of the villains use Kryptonite. She asks who hired them. Kryptonite Man says they'd kill her for free. Supergirl tells the kids from the rootftop to run away and she gets ready for a fight.

Catherine tells Lois she's not sure if her information will help, especially since many stories have come out about Cadmus and nothing ever sticks to them. Lois assured her that every little thing helps. Catherine says she just wants to be able to look her son in the eye again and hands her a file. She says not to call her, write her and not to even use her name for the story. Lois smiles as she reads through the paperwork until something catches her eye and shocks her. She quickly calls for a cab.

Metallo lunges at Supergirl who tells him not to expect an easy win just because her cousin is out of town. Supergirl flips Metallo to the ground. Metallo tries to blast her with Kryptonite energy and Supergirl socks him in the face. 

Perry White has some new stories about the Red Lanterns and Captain Atom but also needs something local. It turns out the college kids from earlier work for the Bugle. He thinks there should still be something of note happening in Metropolis despite Superman being out of town. One of the kids comes up with a story of a gorilla in the zoo adopting cats. David leaves the other two students and his girlfriend sits with them. It turns out the one creating the app is named Alex and his friend is named Justin. Perry asks if anyone has anything better they can use as a story. Lois Lane suddenly barges in demanding to know why Cadmus is experimenting with Kryptonian DNA.

Elise asks Justin how long he's known Alex. He says sometimes it feels like five minutes and sometimes it feels like forever. He says that Justin had a way of getting into people's heads.

Supergirl is starting to get overwhelmed by the villains. Silver Banshee hits her with a sonic scream and Parasite chokes her out. Supergirl gets back up but is blasted by Kryptonite Man's eye beams. 

David returns to see his girlfriend making out with Alex. Alex says any girl that would make out with some guy just because she thinks he'll be rich someday isn't worth the hassle. David tells Alex to keep his hands off of other people's girlfriends and go back to making money off his app. Alex asks who said anything about making money. He says his app is actually open source. This surprises Justin.

Catherine gets home and calls out to her child, not getting an answer. She goes to his room and sees that he was choked to death. 

Alex says, as he was mentioning before, that superheroes are a threat to humanity. Supergirl is worse than Superman, since Superman represents the present but Supergirl represents the future. Justin is surprised Alex is talking about killing Supergirl. Alex says to start thinking of the bigger picture. The Flyover app displays images of several other heroes and their current locations including Batgirl, Robin, Miss Martian and Blue Beetle to name a few. 

Justin says Alex is crazy. He says they're all about to help them. David asks what he's talking about. Alex says he'll explain in good time and the others better not talk about this since he has dirt on all of them. David has been cheating his way through three semesters of molecular biology. Justin has been having an affair with one of the deans. Elise hit a man once while drunk driving and he ended up dying. He tells them college has been fun but it's time to start building a whole new world. 

Catherine finds a note in her room that reads that she shouldn't be talking out of class and 'sorry for your loss', which is signed by Alex. Elsewhere, Supergirl is also in serious trouble as the villains continue to attack her. 

My thoughts-

This is a pretty good set up story, which seems to be the last multi-issue arc before the New 52 would reboot everything. The main characters here seem to be Alex and his buddies. 

Alex is definitely a little creep and he might have some sort of psychic powers or something. He somehow got Elise to start kissing him shortly after they met and already knew she killed someone while drunk driving at some point. That's not something you would tell somebody you just met, y'know? I am curious how Alex knew Catherine though. 

Whether he has psychic powers or not, he reminds me of Zemo in the Captain America Civil War movie where he wasn't able to handle the Avengers personally so he found ways to make them destroy each other. In this case, Alex doesn't seem the type to handle Supergirl in a fist fight, so he just made an app that made it easier for the bad guys to do the job for him. It just shows how danger can come from anywhere.

The way the bad guys found Supergirl, new app or not, was kinda crazy as well. The app just came on live and already these guys not only gathered together but also found some way to teleport to Supergirl's location? I don't think any of those 4 villains have teleportation powers. 

Good set up for a story and the villain of this arc. My only nitpick is I wish we saw more of the Supergirl fight against the villains. Maybe the two-page Supergirl spread could have been one page to give us one more page of action. The most we saw clearly was Supergirl flip Metallo over but even that was drawn in an odd angle.

One last thing to note was that Superman was gone from Metropolis because at the time he was traveling the country to re-examine his outlook on the world. The comic kept reminding us that Superman left town, I had to look up exactly why he was gone.

We'll see what happens in the next issue. As always I like to mention the odd ads and whatnot from the time period. Nothing stood out to me this time, except for a short comic preview tie-in to DC Universe Online which was new-ish at the time. But I did like this 2-page spread of the DC Nation where fans could send their letters. That's always cool.